


In Shining Armor

by SilverDagger



Category: Claymore
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Character Study, Ficlet, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-11
Updated: 2013-11-11
Packaged: 2018-01-01 04:25:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 539
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1040312
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverDagger/pseuds/SilverDagger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>The first time Jean holds a Claymore practice blade, she's seven years old, standing in the center of an open-air arena, and her whole body still aches from the pain of transformation.</i>
</p><p>Knights and monsters, and the origins thereof.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Shining Armor

The first time Jean holds a Claymore practice blade, she's seven years old, standing in the center of an open-air arena, and her whole body still aches from the pain of transformation. The sword is as tall as she is, made of flat, tempered steel, dulled along the edges. She's expecting it to be heavy. It isn't.

 _If I'd had this then_ , she thinks, _if I'd been this then, I could've –_

It isn't true, of course. She knows that. Claymores only ever work for pay, and besides, she's figured out enough by now to know that the monster that destroyed her hometown was not – had never been – a yoma at all. Still, the heft of the blade feels right in her hands, solid and strong, and she swings it experimentally, remembering tales of demonslayers, storybook knights with shining blades and polished shields, defending the weak from the terrible. 

Black cloaked men watch from the sidelines, eyeing her with what might or might not be approval. They scare her, a little. She doesn't like them. But they're not the ones who matter.

Jean blinks against the blur of desert heat, the sting of sand, and swings the sword again in a clumsy arc, putting all her strength behind it because whenever she thinks about her home, she just wants to hit something as hard as she can, and not stop. Alien energy sparks along her nerves, darkness rising behind her eyes and a pressure in her chest, and it seems like she can feel her bones shifting, twisting, like there's something inside her skin that both _is_ and _isn't_ her. That scares her too, and she pulls back from it, feels sudden tears prick at the corners of her eyes – _it's just sand, that's all_ – because it's enough to make her think that maybe she'll turn out to be a monster too, that she won't be able to help it. If it had been a yoma in front of her, there would be blood on the sand now, not so different from blood on snow. If there had been a yoma, it would have fought back.

 _That's good_ , she thinks, and the thought eases something cold inside her. She doesn't like the idea of killing anything that can't fight back. She never has. And that means –

It means that whatever else she is now, she's still herself.

Jean takes a deep breath, bites the inside of her lip with teeth that still feel just a little a bit too sharp to be natural, and thinks about the heroes in her stories, the brave ones who always knew what to do next. She rests the point of her sword in the sand and looks up at the men, silently daring them to say something, to call her weak, like they had Katea, or unstable, like the tiny girl with the braid who wouldn't stop crying. She isn't weak. She won't cry. She's a knight now, and knights don't cry. They protect people.

 _I can do this_ , she thinks, and then, _No, I will do this_. Not for the people who made her like this, and not for the ghosts of the ones she couldn't save. For the ones she still can.


End file.
